In a world of rising shocks and uncertainty, demand is growing for insights, tools, and strategies to build resilience. This interim report lays the groundwork for positioning resilience as a core pillar of economic and financial decision-making by clarifying the returns on resilience investments for people, economies, and businesses. Built on broad expert input and global consultations, it begins to answer a pressing question: how can we turn growing momentum into meaningful action in the lead-up to COP30?
As climate and nature shocks become impossible to ignore, awareness of the urgent need for investments in resilience and adaptation is rising in governments, business and civil society. Yet economic and financial leaders still face a fundamental challenge: they know resilience matters, but lack the clarity, data, and tools to act decisively.
COP30 is putting resilience on the map. Now’s the time to align and act.
This interim report is a first step. It brings together insights from individuals associated with over 120 organisations, 50 publications, and four global consultations to support economic and financial decision
It aims to do three things:
- Set a shared narrative: It clarifies what resilience means and why it matters – for people, economies and business. It speaks directly to economic and financial leaders, using the language of risk, return and opportunity.
- Build a usable evidence base: It brings together data and case studies on the costs of inaction, the returns on investing in resilience, and the scale of financing needed. The early findings are clear: resilience investments deliver measurable benefits in health, jobs and GDP, and markets for resilient solutions are showing strong projections.
- Identify breakthrough actions: It points to the practical, scalable actions needed to overcome systemic barriers to unlock investment, and to seize the opportunity at COP30 to drive concerted action.
What’s next?
This is an interim release. We are actively refining the evidence base and will publish a full update by the end of July. The aim is clear: to ensure that by COP30, resilience is seen not as a climate co-benefit, but as a core economic and development strategy — with the data, capital and political will to back it.
We’re building a coalition. If you or your organisation are working to advance resilience — or want to contribute to shaping the agenda for COP30 — we’d love to hear from you.
